Leadership (Abuja)
16 September 2009
Abuja — A former minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Malam Nasiru El-Rufai, has been denied a new international passport by the Nigerian High Commission in London, which claimed to be acting on "orders from Abuja".
LEADERSHIP gathered that El-Rufai, who currently lives in the United Kingdom and Dubai, had applied for a new Nigerian passport through the High Commission because there was no more space left in the one he uses. But, after a few days and the authorities in Abuja got wind of it, according to a source, a directive to stop issuance of the new passport was quickly sent to London. The directive, said to have emanated from the National Security Adviser (NSA) and the National Intelligence Agency (NIA), was unusual but the officials claimed they had no choice except to comply.
A diplomat who pleaded anonymity revealed that it was President Umaru Yar'Adua himself that gave the order. But checks at the presidency failed to yield any result, as nobody was willing to confirm or deny that President Yar'Adua, ostensibly engaged in a face-off with El-Rufai, had a hand in the matter.
However, political pundits interviewed were unanimous in their condemnation of the treatment meted out to El-Rufai, especially as he made the request in accordance with the rules. Both the president and the Federal Government he heads, said one respondent, have no right to deny any Nigerian an international passport.
"This should not be happening in a democracy," he noted.
Another interviewee said: "Not even the military went this far. And this is a government that claims to be better than its predecessors in terms of the rule of law. This level of pettiness should have no place in a serious government. Is Yar'Adua so idle as to concern himself with such issues?"
A very senior lawyer stated that, by not issuing El-Rufai a passport, the Yar'Adua government is in breach of international law and the ECOWAS treaty. It is also a violation of human rights, he added.
Since the formative days of the Yar'Adua government, the president has not been friends with El-Rufai and Nuhu Ribadu, the former chairman of the EFCC who was sacked and subsequently demoted from the rank of assistant inspector-general of police (AIG) to deputy commissioner of police (DCP). The presidency believes that El-Rufai and Ribadu are mainly responsible for the very bad image of the government in the international community.
The situation worsened recently when the EFCC declared El-Rufai wanted and even threatened to get him extradited. El-Rufai had dared the government to go ahead and extradite him if it thought it could.
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What is this meaningless babblings I hear!It is quite preposterous for Nigerians to question the emperor's right not to invoke the rule of man in place of the Rule of Law.Rule of Law can only be demanded by citizens who actually voted their president into the presidency,not acquescent subjects of a land where the mode of sucession is about rigging and who out rigs the other.Nigerians should not complain about rule of law or lack of it until they can resist usurpation of their balot.